Due to their sensitive components, disk drives are vulnerable to externally induced shocks and vibrations. Because magnetic disk drives are predominantly designed for operation in stationary environments, external shock and vibration protection is often required to improve the robustness of disk drives in mobile applications. To fulfill this requirement, vibration and shock protective cases are often used to carry and transport small external disk drives.
It is a common practice to provide an internal shock and vibration isolation to a portable disk drive encased in a plastic enclosure. Conventionally, elastomeric mounts having various geometric shapes are used to support the disk drive and to provide the necessary shock and vibration isolation within its plastic enclosure. Typically, these mounts are often custom molded to fit the disk drive assembly and the enclosure.
However, the known implementations of shock mounts in many disk drive enclosures are rather poor because they have poor shock isolation efficiency. Unfortunately, it is difficult to design a proper shock and vibration isolation mechanical system. Ideally, a shock and vibration isolation system balances the stiffness in the shock mount and shock mount supporting structures and a desired shock mount pre-load. The challenge is to design a relatively stiff shock mount supporting structure with the known materials, such as plastic.